The German project RADIESCHEN / radish (Rahmenbedingungen einer disziplinübergreifenden Forschungsdateninfrastruktur /Framework for an inter-disciplinary research data infrastructure) has published the project’s synthesis in English. The objective of this DFG-funded project was the development of a roadmap and recommendations for a multi-disciplinary research data infrastructure in Germany.

The project team identified requirements for generic components of existing infrastructures and potential for cross-linking of multi-disciplinary components. The resulting analysis is based on a survey of existing and new projects and includes measures for community building. Key aspects of the analysis are the technical components of the infrastructure, the cost model and the investigation of cross-disciplinary topics.

Funded by a $1 million Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant, the OJS-DVN project intends to develop a plugin for journals that are using the Open Journal System (OJS), a journal management and publishing system that has been developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), to expand and improve access to research. Read the rest of this entry »

Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are widely used in various fields of economics and other social sciences. As they become more numerous, a central registry on which trials are on-going or complete (or abandoned) becomes important for various reasons: as a source of results for meta-analysis; as a one-stop resource to find out about available survey instruments and data.